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As any of you who follow me on Twitter will realise, I’ve recently been enjoying The Philanderer, a play by George Bernard Shaw and directed by Paul Miller at the Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond, London. I went … mumble mumble … oh all right, four times.

It’s over now, alas. The last night was on Saturday. But now that Rupert Young (in the title role of Leonard Charteris) is no longer casting a glamour over me, I can take a breath and devote a little more thought to the female characters in the play.

The first we meet is Grace Tranfield, played by Helen Bradbury. Grace is cool, strong and independent – and a widow who remembers fondly how her husband was in love with her. She has now fallen genuinely in love with Leonard, but is self-possessed enough to reject him for his philandering ways.

Helen Bradbury as Grace Tranfield, and Rupert Young as Leonard Charteris (photo by Tristram Kenton for the Observer )

Grace is a New Woman indeed, and I liked her very much for it.

The other woman with a claim to Leonard’s affections is Julia Craven, played with great spirit and fiery damp eyes by Dorothea Myer-Bennett. Julia is passionate, demanding and manipulative. She has thrown herself into a thorough dependency on Leonard’s love.

Rupert as Leonard, and Dorothea Myer-Bennett as Julia Craven (photo by The Other Richard)

Julia is what the play terms ‘a womanly woman’, and she’s certainly an effective ‘irresistible force’ to Leonard’s ‘immovable object’.

I loved both these characters, and the actors who brought them to beautifully vivid life. I think, on the whole, though, I most liked the character of Julia’s younger sister Sylvia Craven, played with wit and quiet aplomb by Paksie Vernon.

In no way was I a child with precocious tastes, but somehow I picked out Delacroix as an Artist of Interest while browsing through our family encyclopedia, many many years ago. That could have all come down to the fact that he’s cute, and has the dark brown hair / dark brown eyes combination I inherited from my beloved father – who was also cute and an artist.

Eugene Delacroix, self-portrait at about age 39 (1837).

Delacroix was born in Paris in 1798, just a couple of years after Keats was born in London. Like Keats, Delacroix was intrigued by beauty and truth, which he pursued via painting and also via his writings about art. One of the last thoughts Delacroix committed to writing was, “The first merit of a painting is to be a feast for the eye … it’s like beautiful verses; nothing in the world will prevent them from being bad if they shock the ear.”

I also love that he knew a static or perfectly finished work of art would keep the spectator at a distance, or even shut them out. The wise artist “offers the viewer some scope for dynamic imaginative participation”. [Patrick Noon, p20]

Mr B and I have been watching the Amazon Prime series Bosch (2015) – developed by Eric Overmyer based on the novels by Michael Connelly, and starring Titus Welliver as the eponymous Hieronymus ‘Harry’ Bosch. We’re into the second season now, and very much enjoying it. But the thing I want to talk about today is the opening credits.

The main title sequence was created by Imaginary Forces. You can view their official version on their website: imaginaryforces.com. However, with thanks to YouTube, I’ll embed below the version I’m familiar with from the show itself (at least, as released in the UK).

The sequence is mesmerising, and we never ever hit the fast-forward button.

The main ‘horizontal mirror’ idea seems so simple, and yet it’s unusual and very effective, as well as beautifully combined with other movement travelling from left to right. Imaginary Forces say the intended meaning behind the mirrored images is that there are two sides to every story – which makes it even more interesting that the movement tends to converge towards the centre of the screen. They also talk about how ‘the intertwining story lines of the city create a kaleidoscopic, almost dizzying version of the truth’. Which really is utterly awesome.

I discovered the film Her (2013) fairly recently, but it immediately went onto my list of favourites. It was written and directed by Spike Jonze, who won the Oscar and Golden Globe for best (original) screenplay – and deservedly so.

I am only surprised that the film didn’t win more honours, especially for Joaquin Phoenix, who plays Theodore. His performance is a tour de force, sustained in intriguing detail throughout, frequently on his own or in scenes where he is playing against the disembodied voice of his computer’s operating system, named Samantha. I love this photo of him in the film poster… That exquisite expression! (Not to mention those eyes!) He really is a terrific actor.

The film introduces Theodore via his job, which is to write letters on behalf of other people – the sort of beautiful, emotional letters that mark significant life events. He is very very good at his job, and has repeat clients who’ve used his talents for years, so that in effect he’s become part of their own life stories. He’s obviously full of empathy, and rather a romantic. But we soon find he’s also lonely, and is (unwillingly) in the final stages of a divorce.

Theodore is intrigued by the launch of a new ‘artificially intelligent’ operating system (OS). Once he installs it and answers a few questions, he meets Samantha (voiced by Scarlett Johansson) – and he is surprised to find that she acts and reacts just like a ‘real’ person, right from the start. Initially that’s a little unnerving, but they become friends, and she really lifts Theodore out of the glums. Soon they are falling in love with each other.

I meant to finish this post and publish it before I saw the latest instalment in the Terminator franchise – but I treated myself to a cinema trip this afternoon, and there went that plan! And maybe that’s how it should be, as I definitely felt that the Genisys film adds something good to the mix.

My intention was to ponder why I like it all so much. Because I do. I loved the first film way back when it was released in the mid 80s, and I have loved every instance of the franchise since, even the ones that have been less popular.

Just to recap, I am talking about:

The Terminator (1984 film)

Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991 film)

Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003 film)

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles (2008-2009 TV series)

Terminator Salvation (2009 film)

Terminator Genisys (2015 film)

Why do I love it so…?

Sarah Connor

The first film featured a wonderful hero in Sarah Connor – an ordinary young woman, a waitress, who rises to meet unimaginable challenges. And this was back in the days when admirable female heroes were still few and far between. The second film expanded Sarah’s awesomeness. She has become a relentless warrior, who refuses to be daunted even when institutionalised. (And oh … did I ever hanker over those biceps!) She was played with great heart and strength in both films by Linda Hamilton.

The waitress Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) in ‘The Terminator’.

The warrior Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) in ‘T2: Judgment Day’.

Sarah didn’t feature in the third film, but instead we had Katherine, John Connor’s future wife, played by the always impressive Claire Danes. I felt she did very well in bringing her own strength and sensibilities to the story of an ordinary woman determinedly dealing with rather shockingly unexpected circumstances.

Last weekend I went to a play at the Jermyn Street Theatre in London, with a couple of good friends. The play was Told Look Younger, a new piece by Stephen Wyatt, that explores issues around being a gay man of a certain age. The performance that evening was a ‘gala night’ in support of the charity Opening Doors London, which supports older LGBT people in the UK. All that is, of course, directly relevant to my interests. But there was an additional attraction in that the gala night was hosted by Richard Wilson, a much beloved actor of a certain age and a certain sexuality.

The play itself was interesting and very well written. It features three friends in their fifties who’ve known each other since their university days. They are quite different in many ways, and one wonders if they would have become such stalwart friends if it wasn’t for discovering (way back when they were young) that they had their sexuality in common if nothing else.

The three acts take place with nine month gaps in between. The friends meet up in each act at a small London restaurant which changes management and cuisine with the seasons – apparently never making a success of it, for the three friends are the only ever customers. While the friends are agonising over their love lives and sex lives, or lack thereof, comic relief is provided by ‘The Waiters’ – three very distinctive roles played by the same (younger) actor.

In this production – the play’s debut – the waiters were played with great aplomb (not to mention attractiveness) by Simon Haines.

We first meet Oliver (Robin Hooper) and Jeremy (Michael Garner) in a French restaurant one autumn, with their waiter in full-on surly mode. They are concerned about their friend Colin (Christopher Hunter) who has decided to marry his recently acquired lover, the nineteen-year-old Achmet – and they spend the time before he arrives trying to decide how to handle the matter. When Colin finally shows up, he insists that the relationship is about love – very happy and mutual love – but even he talks about helping Achmet with his UK visa and with his family back home.

And so the story unfolds over a period of eighteen months, with each of the friends finding or losing love, and the restaurant transforming to Italian and then Vegetarian. There is humour – my favourite line being, ‘He did get as far as G’ – but there is also unhappiness, grief and shouty arguments.

After the play, Richard Wilson hosted a Q+A featuring all four actors as well as the writer and the director Sue Dunderdale. An embarrassment of riches!

In the discussion, various questions and issues were raised, which didn’t necessarily find answers. A journalist from Gay Times magazine asked, ‘Do you end up being attracted to men of your own age?’ There were a hundred answers to that, or maybe none. It was notable in the play, I think, that only two of the various relationships discussed did not involve a large age difference.

I’ve been revisiting an old favourite today, being sorely in need of a laugh. And Stiff Upper Lips (1998) never fails me! It’s utterly hilarious – though often in that delightfully droll kind of way in which absurdity piles upon absurdity until you finally end up shouting out with laughter at the tiniest thing.

The film is an affectionate parody of Merchant Ivory films, specifically drawing on EM Forster’s A Room with a View, A Passage to India, and Maurice. It also tips the lid to Chariots of Fire and Death in Venice, and indeed to that whole Edwardian genre of tea parties, repressed emotion, and snobbery about all that isn’t the English upper class.

For a spoof, it’s beautifully made and filmed, with terrific costumes and locations in England, Italy and India.

The actors are all great, too. We start with wonderful Samuel West as Edward, the upper class twit one can’t help but feel fond of. Edward is taking his best friend Cedric (Robert Portal) home to meet his sister Emily (Georgina Cates) – and everyone is well aware that the visit is all about matchmaking. Emily and Cedric don’t exactly hit it off, but their maiden aunt Agnes (Prunella Scales) decides to throw the young people together during a trip to Italy. They take local village lad George (Sean Pertwee) with them as a new servant. When Italy doesn’t work out, Agnes takes them all somewhere quintessentially British: India, where they meet eccentric plantation owner Horace (Peter Ustinov).

I have put off watching this film for a long time – but I finally played the DVD tonight, and I must say I was very glad that I finally did. Private Romeo (2011) was written and directed by Alan Brown, based on the play Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare. The official synopsis begins:

When eight cadets are left behind at an isolated military high school, the greatest romantic drama ever written seeps out of the classroom and permeates their lives.

Much of the film’s action and dialogue comes from the original Shakespeare, with just enough modern-day, original dialogue to relocate the story in time and space. It was actually filmed in cadet or high school locations (rather than in built sets), which adds terrific verisimilitude.

No one can have missed by now that we are living through the centenary years of the Great War, 1914-1918. The production of the play Not About Heroes is timely, of course, but I love that it has also spent the past months touring so many places closely associated with Wilfred Owen: Edinburgh, where it was staged at Craiglockhart itself; Ripon; Scarborough; Ors in France; Shrewsbury… It is now in the last weeks of its run, at Trafalgar Studios in London, on Whitehall just off Trafalgar Square. That’s what I call doing the thing properly.

The play is about two officers and war poets – Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon – their poetry and their all-too-brief friendship. Much of the dialogue is directly influenced by their letters and poems, with their conversations skilfully reimagined. Owen was already writing poetry when he first met Sassoon, who was an established, published poet – but the short while they spent together at Craiglockhart was in effect an intense ‘master class’. With Sassoon there as hero, critic and mentor, Owen’s talents surged into true accomplishment.

The play very much focuses on this aspect of their relationship, with their poetry and the War and their friendship comingled. The homosexual aspects of both characters are underwritten almost to the point of non-existence. If you don’t know who Robbie Ross was, then you would assume that Sassoon introducing Owen to him was only about the possibility of Owen’s poetry being published. Not that I think anything explicit happened between Sassoon and Owen, but it would be good to have a play that allows them to at least talk about the matter.

I was delighted to attend the very first night of this production at the Noel Coward Theatre, which adapts the film Shakespeare in Love (1998) and puts it on the stage. Like the film it was a wonderful romp, and a great deal of fun!

We begin with Will Shakespeare (Tom Bateman) on stage, struggling through a bout of writer’s block, and barely able to compose even the first line of a sonnet. What Will isn’t aware of, though, is that he’s not alone on stage; almost the entire cast are there with him, hanging on his every hard-won word. So, no pressure then. It’s not like the world and 450 years of posterity are waiting on this darned sonnet, are they…?

It was an interesting dramatisation of writer’s block, and it was more interesting still that the metaphor continued and evolved throughout the play. There was barely a moment in which the main characters were alone together; if there weren’t other characters on stage, then they were watching from the galleries above. With all these onlookers, it seemed that “All the world’s a stage” indeed.

As we’ve come to expect from Elizabethan settings, music played a great part in the show. Of the 28 cast, four played musical instruments while on stage, and sang, sometimes joined by the company at large. This aspect of the show was really beautiful and effective. Since much of the action involved actors putting on a play, there were times when the music was an intrinsic part of the action. At other times, the music functioned as a soundtrack. It was all gorgeous, and occasionally very moving.

David Oakes as Marlowe; rehearsal photo by Johan Persson

We meet Christopher ‘Kit’ Marlowe (David Oakes), Will’s friend – and more of an admired colleague in this than the Big Name rival of the film. We see far more of Marlowe in this production, I’m glad to say, with the role amalgamating various lines such as those of Dr Moth in the film. There was a nice bit of ambiguity introduced, with a later scene which I’ve imagined myself on occasion. (I’ll say no more!)

I thought Oakes did a lovely understated job with this role. His Marlowe is not only very clever but occasionally wise. He is certainly less flamboyant than we might expect, but Will still needs to warn him “Hands off!” when it comes to Thomas Kent, Will’s Romeo. So that was nice.

Lucy Briggs-Owen, who I’d very much admired in Fortune’s Fool at The Old Vic, was wonderful as Viola de Lesseps, Will’s Juliet. She coped with the cross-dressing confusion admirably. Quite apart from what must be a bewildering number of costume changes.

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I received a free copy of this novella from the author - the wonderful Relle - in return for an honest review.
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